Travels"--the most ingenious and elaborate libel against man and God
ever written--in his pocket, nearly ready for publication; and we may
conceive the grim, sardonic smile with which he read it to his friends,
and their tumultuous mirth. Gay was projecting his "Beggars' Opera," and
Pope preparing some of his witty "Miscellanies." At the end of two
months, the Dean was hurried home by the tidings of Stella's illness. He
left the "Travels" behind him, for the copyright of which Pope procured
L300,--a sum counted then very large, and which Swift generously handed
over to Pope.

In September this year, when returning in Lord Bolingbroke's coach from
Dawley, the poet was overturned in a little rivulet near Twickenhan, and
nearly drowned. The unfortunate little man! One is reminded of
Gulliver's accident in the Brobdignagian cream-pot. In trying to break
the glasses of the coach, which were down, he severely cut his right
hand, and lost the use of two of his fingers,--an addition to his other
deformities not very desirable; and we suspect that Pope thought
Voltaire (who had met him at Bolingbroke's) but a miserable comforter,
when, in a letter of pretended condolence, he asked--"Is it possible
that those fingers which have written 'The Rape of the Lock,' and
dressed Homer so becomingly in an English coat, should have been so
barbarously treated? Let the hand of Dennis or of your poetasters be cut
off; yours is sacred." It was perhaps in keeping that those mutilated
fingers were soon to be employed in attacking Dennis, and that the
embittered poet was about, with the half of his hand, but with the whole
of his heart, to write "The Dunciad."

In the end of April 1727, we find Swift again in Twickenham, where his
irritation at the continued ascendancy of Sir Robert Walpole served to
infuse more venom into the "Miscellanies" concocted between him and